Allocation of loot

[Durmegil Guldur]

I wanted to ask you guys' opinion on something, but first I'll give you some background:

I am currently DMing a Pathfinder game for a large group of my friends (10 players, when all the currently active players are present). I had been building up to a climatic encounter with an evil cleric who had set up in an Orc slavers camp. When the encounter was over and the PCs had buried their Fighter compatriot (player decided he wanted to try a new character), instead of coming up with a generic treasure hoard for the PCs to pick over, I instead let them choose an item (or items) up to a certain GP value from the Core book (or APG) and gave them each some gold on top. I had already set the amounts based on the character's current wealth, the fact that they gained a level from the encounter and the wealth by level table.

While this meant that everyone got something useful to their character out of the encounter and prevented the hour and a half of sorting out who gets what from the hoard and/or sorting out negotiations for sale price of unwanted items, it did tie up the books for a time, while everyone figured out what they wanted.

My question is: Do you guys think this is a good idea in such a large group, or should I just build the treasure hoard beforehand out of things I think the characters in the group will find useful (they might not necessarily agree with me)?

[molten_dragon]

There needs to be some way of making sure that the PCs get treasure that benefits them. For good or for ill, the game is based on the idea that characters have a certain amount of treasure at certain levels. If they don't, then they fall behind on the power curve.

There are several ways of making sure they can get items useful to them. One is to do what you did. Simply let them pick stuff out themselves up to a certain limit. Second is to try and specifically give out treasure useful to them when you design treasure. Third is to give out whatever you want and simply make it easy for them to sell it and buy the things they really need. It's up to you to decide what works best for your game.

Personally, I tend to use a combination of the three. I ask my players for a wish list of items they want to have, and see to it that they get most of them eventually when I'm designing treasure. The rest is random stuff, which I like putting in because sometimes the players surprise me with how creative they can get with some of the random things I give them. I also tend to make it not too difficult for them to buy and sell items.

As far as distributing treasure goes, our groups have had a lot of luck with the following method. When treasure is gained, figure out what the gold piece value of all of it is and divide that by the number of players to determine everyone's share. Then if people want to they can 'buy' items from the party at half price (essentially they are taking part of their share in an item rather than gold). If they want something that costs more than their share, they have to put in more gold of their own to make up for it. I've found this tends to lessen fights over good items and helps the wealth distribution between characters stay more even.

[Durmegil Guldur]

I might give the wish list thing a try. Some of my players are quite new to the system and might need some guidance on this.

[Seharvepernfan]

As a player, I would want you to have built the treasure beforehand, so that it isn't specifically catered to me (and any other pcs). I would feel cheated if it were, as I like realism, a challenge in making what I find work, and being surprised.

[Cwymbran-San]

We are playing in an Eberron environment, with artificers at hand if not members of the group. So we just dice out every part of loot, distribute evenly (as far as possible) and if one character ends up with something he has little use of, he would hand it over to the next artificer who would break it down for "craft" XP and forge something more fitting.
That way, you are handed loot in the first place, might even try it out, and if it is not to your liking get something else, but the breakdown and reconstruction is done between sessions. Saves tons of time.

[Durmegil Guldur]

Lots of good stuff coming back on this. I guess I was being a bit lazy at the time by allowing the players to determine what they'd like their "share" of the loot to be. I'd never thought about it from a willing suspension of belief point of view before. It might even have handicapped some of the novice players who were suddenly given this huge list of magic items and told to find something they liked. That's the old sleep deprivation working its magic on me.

[DrDeth]

In a game as large as yours, the wishlist thing works.